[sldev] Re: Plugin Licensing (was: Why Linden Labs needs to let the community extend the client without asking for their IP)

[Tim Shephard]

Great comments, Mike.  I think a lot of it depends on what LL wants
from us, GPL aside.

> You could write a GPL'd piece that exports a protocol, run that over a
> socket to your Pythin code and then.. well that's probably ok.  Hence my
> comment that it depends on what you consider a plugin.

An interesting architecture might be to call out to a seperate process
via RPC which interacts with the current code base, especially the UI
and protocol.

This has several advantages (in no particular order):

1.  A unified UI with the Second Life client
2.  Dealing with GPL issues
3.  Stability in the client.   If the seperate process crashes, no problem.
4.  A seperate install also deals with certain branding issues that SL
may be concerned with.

The 64 million dollar question is - would LL be ok with something like this?

I have never been nor never will be on the wrong side of what LL
wants.   Neither would most rational people.   When I am or when we
are, it's usually because LL is being very, and I think foolishly,
opaque about what is that they want.

On 4/8/07, Mike Dickson <mike.dickson at rivendellnh.com> wrote:
> Well, yes except at some point the "platform" isn't generic.  I
> mis-understood your original comment.  You're assuming a generic
> scripting plugin in Python.  But then how much use is that really. Why
> not just run the python interpreter  directly.
>
> The point is at some point you'll want to call some SL specific code.
> You could write a GPL'd piece that exports a protocol, run that over a
> socket to your Pythin code and then.. well that's probably ok.  Hence my
> comment that it depends on what you consider a plugin.

>
> On Sun, 2007-04-08 at 15:01 -0400, Jason Giglio wrote:
> > Mike Dickson wrote:
> > > Not sure that I'd make the assumption that Python somehow absolves me of
> > > the GPL.  I suppose it depends on how the plugin interface works. But
> > > thats fairly language agnostic anyway.
> >
> > Of course it would.
> >
> > If I write a program in PHP, I don't have to worry about licensing my
> > program to be compatible with the PHP license, or the Apache License.
> > The Apache license isn't GPL compatible, and yet there are plenty of
> > GPLed PHP scripts!
> >
> > Apache-PHP-script
> >
> > SL-interpreter plugin-plugin script
> >
> > SL and interpreter plugin become merely the platform that the plugins
> > are running on, just as Apache and PHP might be your platform that your
> > PHP scripts run on.
> >
> > -Jason
> >
> >
>
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